Bob’s Extreme Statements for the Week:

1) Liberation comes from within. Freedom is earned, not given Men cannot liberate Women. Whites cannot liberate Blacks. Straights cannot liberate Gays. Americans cannot liberate Iraqis. The Lebanese people need to liberate themselves from Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. Israel cannot do it for them.

2) Just because we’re liberated doesn’t mean we should sit by and be idle: if someone needs help, we should offer and help them - but they need to do the work. I believe that the US government attempted to do the right thing in Iraq (for the wrong reasons) and in the wrong way. Compared to Afghanistan, where the US performed a little better.

3) If there’s direct threat to yourself (Israel vs. Hezbollah, or Taliban in Afghanistan vs. America) you have the right to FUCK them UP. In my opinion, any member of Hezbollah has forfeited their membership to the human race unless they recant. Radical perceptions of reality require others to react radically.

If you perceive your life as victimization, the rest of the world is going to victimize you - the only person that can change that opinion is you. If you are in a society perpetuating that belief - say through scholastic indoctrination - then those chains are going to be more difficult to break.

4) The creation of radical religious camps that outright campaign to deny physics, recorded and proven history, or science needs to be stopped - home schooling as well. I’m just as tired of fucking christians as I am of fucking moslems.

5) The belief in god is causing more pain than any good it could ever create.

6) The only resources on this planet that’s truly unlimited are human life. We’ve got 6 billion people. A radical excisement of that population, to tune of BILLIONS will not threaten the future human life.

7) You are a gift. Your thoughts, emotions, notions and perceptions form the world. And the world we perceive is so completely amazing that how we collectively allow the creation of slums and wars will always perplex me.

I’m having a REALLY bad day today, I just don’t understand people.

It’s time, Exploding onto your TV and Big Screen! The 9-11 deconstructionists have been signaled to come out from under their money-hungry caves to give their opinion on current events. Now that we’ve had the afterschool special of United 93, that treats the 9-11 story intimately and with care.

Now we have Oliver Stone running to the box office with Nick Cage and Maggie Gyllenhaal in WORLD TRADE CENTER! You know the truth, now see the conspiracy! Now, I know Nick’s a Stone whore, but Damn, Maggie, tell me it isn’t so. Having loved Maggie in Secretary, I regret to see her involved with this - but shrug! I’ll forgive her.

And before, we had the tasteful Black Hawk Down detailing the horrible events of Somalia.

Officially, I say that we need a name for these type of movies - we’ve heard of Blaxsploitation, but I name these as JihadSploitation - the exploitations of the events of terror and Islamic Fundamentalism. We’re going to see more of these.

We’ve already seen Gangsta Rap meets Islamic fundies.

Anger hides itself as empowerment, forging action - unwise, willingness-to-hurt action. And the problem with anger is that we need catharsis for our anger to burn out. So when we have Jihadsploitation appeal to people the was Gangsta Rap, I suspect we’re gonna have some more anger to burn through.

Or explode.

Note: a thanks to Stu for the name of this article.

The Game play has been eluding me for a while, which means I’ve been losing sleep over it. In the Theory of Fun “cast” of gameplay - colision detection vs. simulation, I’ve decided it’s a simulation. Basically, I’m creating a mathematical model of memetic infection with resource constraints - thereby forcing players to establish footholds on resources, and keep control of them.

Also, have a name, first pass on logos (I suck at graphics) and the rough IDEA of how teamplay is going to work. Taking the spinning plate theory and a bit of Rag Doll Kung Fu type of play should work out as the “toy” part of the game. You group your members together and start them spinning - once they get enough “power” in the spin, you can use it for something. The amount “energy” you can store is limited, so it’s use it or loose it. With expenditure caps.

Memetics engine:
Transmission vectors - the number of vectors (mouth & pamphlets, seminars, radio, TV, internet).
Vector Spikes - (events of conversions, etc.)
Message - the core message that inspires the modification of behavior. Note that behavior modification is more important than the message.
Mods: the actual behavior mods that impact the spin of your members.

So, some of the resources you can spin are:

• Promise - measures how appealing your cult is - too weak and no one wants to join, too strong and too many join
• Burn - Effects Spin and Mods - How much damage being in the cult is causing your members - too much and you’re starving them, too little and they will have energy to do other things - affects Resistance
• Resistance - the membrane between you and the rest of the world - too weak and you lose cultists, too strong and it’s hard to recruit (includes things like “copyright”)
• Atrocity - Every cult has deaths and atrocities. Too much and you attract attention. Too little and your followers will not endure for you (and change their behavior)

Members have the following

• A Health - amount of burn a member can endure
• A “spin” value - the length of time a member can be “spun”
• A “gen” value - for each game attribute, basic is 1 member, 1 attribute gen, longer the spin, the higher the value, the more burn is done.

Game Gen Attributes:

• Money - allows for extra vectors and purchasing of events and resources
• Genius - creative ideas
• Soul - the mystical essence of the soul, related to magic and miracles

Resources:

• Base of Operations
• Recruiting Centers
• etc.

Joss Whedon once said, “If nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.” Now, he may have been paraphrasing Sartre, so don’t get too quote heavy.

I have a vision for the world: solving it’s problems, improving it’s use, an architecture for a building which was already made, constructed of sand. It’s a singular vision, and one better than any god could ever have made. By questioning the factual basis of god, I developed my architecture in place.

That’s a lot of hubris, I admit. I know instinctually that one more finger in “solving the world’s problem pie” is not needed, welcome or helpful. Most of us want to be just left alone and if someone else collides with our world view, we immediately assume they are wrong, and act on it. My action is no different.

Many out there believe in god. The invisible sky bully. And because that belief is ingrained into our culture, languages and laws so completely, the declaration of atheism is an act of alienation.

Atheists, by their very nature, don’t get a check in “plays well with others.” We have to learn the value of others’ opinions and company from the ground, where the deists are programmed to access the company of others, the acceptance of the crowd and crown. It’s a pretty harsh statement, no doubt, but it’s true enough.

This blog is part of my architecture: communicate on how to be a successful atheist. To create a work of meaning that helps others overcome the problems I’ve encountered along my journey.

My directive to my fellow atheists today: go out and make a new friend. Boldly do not isolate yourself, but force yourself into situations where you experience others. Find someone you care about and encourage them to care about you.

“Last words before I can spark it?”

“Do I *LOOK* mortal to you?”

OK, it’s not for EVERYONE. But this is the type of silliness that network TV desparately needs.

And SciFi channel is trying get our feedback on it. So, go! Go! GO! Watch the video, chuckle at the craziness. And don’t think too much about the zombie dog and Abe Lincoln… it’s a little weird.

Amazing Screw On Head… brought to you by SciFi.

None of the design for Edgeplay will be public until after That Cult Game is done.

For those that don’t know, I recently purchased a nice truck. I love my truck. 2003 Nissan Frontier, bright blue.

And I was rear-ended yesterday. Yep. So, on the freeway during the freeway high time. I’m slowing down because why? Hey, the cars in front of me WE’REN’T moving! Why didn’t she? Could it be because she’s a stupid 16 year old, not paying for her new car, and talking on her cell phone? I remember her tiny mouth turning into the shape of an “O” in my rear view mirror and her cell phone dropping from her ear.

When we pull over, she runs to my door, white dress, blonde hair. “I’m sorry. I barely hit you… ” the litany of excuses start… and I see the fear on her unblemished face. Decent looking young woman. “Let’s exchange driver’s license, registration and insurance…”

The litany stops.

“Do we have to?” Her eyes roll up to mine, the doubt coming to a head.

“You don’t have insurance?”

“Oh, yeah,” seemingly relieved.

“You don’t have a license?”

“No, but…” another litany of excuses begins.

She heaves in an obvious and amateur way that I know she’ll perfect in about 5 years, pouts a bit as only someone who thinks manipulation is a good model of communication, and moves her chest in some way that makes me notice. Looking up with her blue eyes, she asks, “Is there any way I can talk you out of calling the cops?”

I smiled inwardly. Somewhere in the background of my mind, I heard a shikka-shikka-bowwaaam of a base guitar riff. The Porn… it writes itself.

–

No, I did NOT take advantage of young stupid girl. Yes, I and my truck is fine. No, I did NOT call the cops tho every fiber in my being told me I should have.

Announced on Gamasutra today, the EA is jumping in with White Council.

I want to NOT be a nay sayer! I yearn to not be negative on the EA going into MMO, and the fact that the game is new technology…

I want this to be better than WoW, more popular than WoW, and not suck. I want the developers and designers to feel very good about themselves when this project launches to great success, redefining what it means to play a game in the LOTR genre.

It’s just hard to come up with the real enthusiasm for this. It’s EA - which doesn’t have the best track record and this seems to be competing with Mythic’s W.A.R. It’s LOTR, which unlike Blizzard and Warhammer, the story is told. It’s like coming to the last supper and asking what’s on the menu - we ALREADY know what’s on the menu.

I wish all the people the absolute best of luck!

This is the Game that EVERYONE needs!

Opening credits begins with the World Cup tournament, you create your character for your national team, you see highlights of your character get to the to finals, and suddenly IT happens - you’re red carded out for unsportmans’ like conduct… say HEADBUTTING.

But then the real game starts: it’s a media feeding frenzy - you vs. the computer in manipulating the media in the justification of your action. Create your excuse! Watch the media react! Watch the opponent react! Prepare a written document!

Brought to you by the the Barry Bond’s Steroid Denial game and the NFL vs. NBA Hot Playa Arrest Records.

In fact, I bet Frank Deford would endorse this game as the hottest computer game of the century.

Feh.

Now that I know what I’m gonna do, I’ve gotta go find a framework. My biggest problem is that I’m slow on the uptake.

So, first design was using Torque - then I realized I wanted a web-based interface for ease of development. While Torque can do it, I’m not wanting to develop that interface yet.

For website stuff, Nucleus installed quickly and works fine - none (and I mean NONE) of the mods work and the project looks sorta dead.

Seagull installed except when it said “directory not writeable - please chmod 777 /usr/share/pear/Seagull” - did that - not working. Looks great - also looks like it’s php 5.0 compatible and I REALLY don’t want to reinstall PHP.

WordPress, great working thing - like friggen hell to develop for (develop - not slap a skin on).

So.. fuck it, I’m creating a framework from scratch. Dammit.